Pittsburgh's new artificially intelligent stoplights could mean no more pointless idling

Pittsburgh’s new artificially intelligent stoplights could mean no more pointless idling

road rageMore(No more waiting.Shutterstock) Traffic lights are finally getting smarter in Pittsburgh.Thanks to a new pilot program from the tech startup Rapid Flow Technologies, Steel City now boasts 50 intersections whose stoplights are running artificial intelligence software known as Surtrac that reduces wait times on empty or lightly-traveled roads.Since Surtrac was first introduced in 2012, the Rapid Flow team estimates the AI stoplights have cut emissions by 21%, travel times by 25%, and idling times by 40%.The magic of Surtrac is that it bundles each stoplight into an intelligent network “that moves all the vehicles it knows about through the intersection in the most efficient way possible,” Rapid Flow CEO Steve Smith said at the recent White House Frontiers Conference, according to IEEE Spectrum.Most current traffic lights operate on simple…